Lamenting in the Time of Covid-19

Henry Daras, Woman Lamenting the End of...

This post was originally published on March 30, 2020. 

Considering what the world is going through in this season of Covid-19, I asked Kaitlin Curtice, Marlena Graves, Gena Thomas and Beth Watkins to offer their reflections on lamenting.


KAITLIN CURTICE

The ebb and flow of lament is something that never fully goes away, just shifts as our life seasons change. Right now, we are living in individual and collective lament, and part of being a good human in this world is to honestly face our lament and ask what it requires of us to head toward healing. It will take time; it always does. But I believe when we name our lament and our grief, we become partners with our grief and with one another. 


Kaitlin is the author of GLORY HAPPENING, and  NATIVE. She is a member of the Potawatomi Citizen Band Nation. You can follow Kaitlin on her website. And on Twitter.


BETH WATKINS

Lament puts a name to pain, hurt, and suffering.

I lamented when I wrote my father’s eulogy. It was also lament when I wrote in my journal, pages upon pages, about my father, our relationship, the pain and confusion I felt. When I cried with my husband, tried to articulate how it felt to my friends in the days after his passing, this was also lament.


Lament is going to therapy and naming and listing each and every loss I incurred when I was forced to leave a country I had made my home. Lament is writing a public essay about infertility and the grief I feel in having a body that does not work like it should. Lament is naming through angry tears the things I cannot do or cannot do well anymore because of chronic pain. Lament is naming a sadness or loss, posting about it, knowing there are others who experience this, can identify, feel heard or seen reading a loss they can also identify as their own. Lament is crying out to God about the injustice I see, my longings for a world where all is made new in a place that seems full of so much pain. Lament is honest that all is not well and names the ways in which that is so.


Lament has no agenda. It doesn’t start at the bottom and plan to sail upward. It is a naming of grief, suffering, pain -- an account of what has been lost, taken, or ruined. It begs to be heard and not forgotten. It refuses to gloss over suffering, doesn’t allow heartbreak to be ignored. 


Sometimes we write (publicly or privately), speak, sing, or cry our laments. Sometimes it hurts as much as it did when we began speaking. Sometimes we make it all the way to new hope. Sometimes our words help others feel seen, known. Lament helps us be honest about the universality of suffering, and the hard, angry truth that this suffering in our world can and be unfairly distributed. 


We lament to name hard truths, and hope by doing so we can reach the other side, whatever that means, whatever that may take. I believe we must name our losses, sufferings, pain and hurts, and the injustices, failures, and abuses of power we see around us collectively, societally as well if we wish to see new life, new hope flourish. 


On her blog, Beth writes about living toward the kingdom of God wherever we find ourselves, seeking grace, and finding neighbors all around us – even in places we didn’t know to look. You can follow Beth on her blog. And on Twitter.

Man of Sorrows, by James Janknegt

GENA THOMAS

Lament can take many forms. After walking through Ursula Processing Center and Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas in the fall of 2018, I couldn't get comfortable and I couldn't sleep. I took out my green pocket-sized notebook hoping to process through some of what my eyes had seen. Nothing would come. As I put my pen on my notebook, the words I wrote down, the words that came out were cuss words. Big, bold, bubble-letter cuss words. The D-word. The F-word. The S-word. I was embarrassed wondering what the guy sitting next to me would think. But I couldn't stop coloring in the letters of each word. When I told my friend Craig Stewart, and confessed my shame in what came out, he said, “I think that may be more biblical than we were raised to believe: a solid form of lament.” For me, lament often takes shape in my writing, but it happens to my body too. After reading certain news stories, I might fall to the ground and put my head to the floor and experience body-convulsing crying. Or a long walk where I yell at God, fist raised in the air, and anger on my tongue. 


I might begin weeping after I read a message from a friend going through something really hard. Sometimes I’ll sit in silence to let the truth of something lamentable wash over me fully. Sometimes, I’ll advocate for a certain cause out of lament that a certain injustice is occurring. When I want to express lament, but don’t know how, I often turn to an acrostic. 

In his book Prophetic Lament, Soong-Chan Rah informs the reader of the acrostic lament tool. “The acrostic points to an order beyond our chaos” and reminds us that God is in control even in the midst of suffering. Rah shows the pattern found in the book of Lamentations where the author uses the Hebrew alphabet as a way to guide the lamentations, and find fullness, shape, and form in them. So I’ve written a few laments through acrostics, and they have given me some type of order beyond the chaos I am feeling. Mostly, for someone like me who is often in their head, I have to give myself permission to actually feel the lament. And sometimes that means feeling a need to confess the things I’ve done or ways I’ve contributed to an injustice.


Gena has written SEPARATED BY THE BORDER and A SMOLDERING WICK: Igniting Missions Work With Sustainable Practices. You can follow Gena on her blog. And on Twitter.


MARLENA GRAVES

What does lamenting mean to me?

Naming individual and collective grief - not repressing it, not denying it. It also means allowing other people to do the same without trying to fix it. I realize there are as many ways to lament as there are personalities. We let people lament as they see fit. 

Marlena is the author of A BEAUTIFUL DISASTER, and  THE WAY UP IS DOWN: Finding Yourself By Forgetting Yourself. You can follow Marlena on her website. And on Twitter.

RECONNECT: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction by Ed Cyzewski. A Review

Ed Cyzewski/Photo Credit: EdCyzewski.com

Ed Cyzewski’s book RECONNECT: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction has a simple premise.

“Our digital devices and social media apps are limiting our ability to concentrate, to have conversations, to eat dinner with our families or friends, and to practice spirituality because they distract us, eat up valuable time, and train us to crave stimulation, affirmation, and passive amusement.”

As one who deeply appreciates spiritual formation and practices Christian meditation (Centering Prayer), Cyzewski sees the danger of over-reliance on social media.

“Our devices and social media have the power to shape us into a particular kind of people: distracted by many thoughts, reactive, compulsive, and impatient.”

He points to the combination of increasingly sophisticated smartphones, and apps that tie-in to a constant stream of social media as the culprit. “Disembodied technology can devastate incarnate spirituality. How can we experience ‘God with us’ if we aren’t even aware of ourselves in the present moment?”

The prevalence of platforms for mean-spirited memes contributes to social division. And the rewards (given in likes, impressions and pageviews) for the meanest seem to strengthen this connection.

After taking the time to establish the extent of the problem, Cyzewski then turns to solutions, beginning with explaining the basics of what spiritual formation looks like.

“It involves patience, focus, silence, solitude, stillness, community, and regular practice. Centering prayer helps us release distracting thoughts with a prayer word so that we can become present for God. Whether practicing centering prayer or silent breathing in solitude, the experience of contemplative prayer, which is the interior work by the loving presence of God, is typically associated with a measure of stillness and awareness of God in the present moment.”

As social media is designed to solicit and offer instant gratification, Cyzewski cautions that spiritual practice involves discipline with results coming surely but slowly. It’s the exact opposite of a quick-fix.

Cyzewski spends some time, early on, in explaining the psychological research that goes behind the creation of social media and smartphone apps and their addictive nature. However, he makes his aim clear. “I have no intention of telling people to stop using their phones completely, to use a flip phone, to dumpster dive as resistance to the consumer economy…Rather, I want us to restore an element of free choice in our use of technology, specifically creating more space to choose things that are good for us (and others), like spiritual practices and serving our neighbors.”

“Social media isn’t designed to promote the most accurate or the most carefully assembled information. On social media, a study that offers a careful, measured assessment of its findings will always lose out to the emotionally charged spin-off article from a partisan site that twists the study’s findings to confirm the suspicions and bias of readers—thus ensuring that the average person is more likely to miss the original study.”

Case-in-point is the proliferation of bots, disseminating all sorts of falsity as truth, which can lead to intellectual illiteracy among youth who are most prone to spend large amounts of time on social media. “Even more disturbing is the finding from a Stanford study that more than 80 percent of middle school students couldn’t determine the difference between an ad and a news story. 

Meanwhile, most high school students struggled to discern whether manipulated images were genuine, were unlikely to click through a link to evaluate a source’s credibility, and even when comparing the credibility of organizations, often struggled to figure out which was more reliable.”

So, is there hope? Cyzewski writes: “While there are opportunities for connection, community, and encouragement via social media notifications, those notifications can also serve as a source of insecurity that drives us back to social media for another hit of affirmation. (By the way, you can easily turn them off under your phone’s settings—click on “Notifications” to customize which apps can send them to you.)”

Turning notifications off on your smartphone is only one of a variety of practical tips Cyzewski includes in his book to help lessen the draw of social media on our lives. Here’s another: “Perhaps it would help to ask how we can become more present in our communities, addressing injustice and inequality while sharing the good news of God’s love, rather than policing what other Christians believe [and write via social media].”

The fruits of disengagement from social media and actively pursuing spiritual direction can be found in “silence, freedom from distractions and interpersonal conversations, writes Cyzewski. “The gift of the church for a world drowning in digital distraction is the spiritual restoration that comes from God’s always present love. If the church has one asset going for it, it’s the fact that it offers a physical space where people reliably show up every week. That physical space does not need video screens, smartphones, or other forms of technology to accomplish its purpose...”

Besides modified disengagement from social media, Cyzewski says we need discipline. “Making any kind of meaningful and long-lasting change to address digital formation versus spiritual formation calls for a clear and decisive choice,” he advises. “If digital technology is designed to be compulsive, addictive, and invasive and we struggle to put our devices down because of their appealing connections, then we won’t stand a chance without an intentional plan moving forward.”

What about social justice advocates, who rely on real-time information to fine-tune advocacy? Cyzewski says it’s possible to remain an advocate with limited social media use. In fact, including locally-based volunteer efforts where human contact is possible may prove to be the most satisfying of all social justice work.

What would a spiritually-infused version of social media look like? Cyzewski suggests that “perhaps our souls and the souls of others would be most encouraged if we prioritized gratefully sharing how God has shown up in our lives each day or the things that make us come alive. Living in greater awareness of the beauty and truth we’ve experienced will make us more prepared to pray simply because we’ll be aware of what God has given us.”

In summary, Cyzewski presents a very straightforward three-step answer to being overwhelmed and overinfluenced by social media:
“Protect your time.
Prioritize one-on-one interactions.
Restore your spirit with daily silence.”

Ed Cyzewski is one of the most coherent, intelligent and thoughtful writers I know. I highly recommend RECONNECT: Spiritual Restoration from Digital Distraction.

American Dialogue by Joseph Ellis: A Review

"This is probably all one can ask of history, and the history of ideas in particular: not to resolve issues but to raise the level of the debate." - Albert O. Hirschman.

Joseph Ellis uses this premise to help guide us through his book, AMERICAN DIALOGUE. That is, he's not so much interested in proving points (although you could make a case that he does), as much as laying out a fascinating groundwork that hopefully will lead to more productive and civil conversation.

For the most part, the conversation centers around the availability of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the people of the United States. As Ellis puts it: "'We the people' has been a struggle, residual prejudices may disappear but never die, and the ongoing battle for racial equality remains the longest, most challenging struggle in American history."

One part of that struggle is economic inequality. Ellis compares America's Guilded Age (of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century) to our current state of economic affairs. He writes, "[T]he United States has a higher level of income inequality than any other democracy in the developed world. In effect, as the size of the economic pie has grown over the last fifty years, larger slices have increasingly gone to a smaller segment of American society."

Throughout AMERICAN DIALOGUE, Ellis refers to the ideas of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison and George Washington to engage us in a discussion of the development of the unique republic called the United States.

"These voices from the past speak from different contexts with distinctive political accents, but they constitute a chorus in sounding three clear notes," he says. "First, the United States has committed the predictable mistakes of a novice superpower most rooted in overconfidence bordering on arrogance; second, wars have become routinized because foreign policy has become militarized at the same time as the middle class has become immunized from military service; and third, the creedal conviction that American values are transplantable to all regions of the world is highly suspect and likely to draw the United States into nation-building project beyond its will or capacity to complete."

A few pages after making these points, Ellis brings us up to the present day when writing about our current political situation. "Trump embodies, in almost archetypical form, the demagogic downside of democracy... The very fact that a person with Trump's obvious mental, emotional, and moral limitations could be chosen to lead the free world casts a dark shadow of doubt over the credibility and reliability of the United States as the first democratic superpower."

Joseph Ellis

Referencing America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Ellis notes: "One can only imagine George Washington rolling over in his grave. For the very suggestion that the British Empire should serve as the role model for American leadership in the world defies the core values of the American founding. A republic, by definition, cannot be an empire."

As for the consequences of not heeding this wisdom, Ellis goes on to state: "... The role of superpower in the twenty-first century is unlikely to prove cost-effective. When the ledger is closed on the military budget for Iraq and Afghanistan, the cost will approach $4 trillion. Such a sum, if spent on domestic priorities, could have shored up Medicare for a generation and paid for the restoration of America's aging infrastructure."

As the founding leaders struggled with establishing a system of government (states' rights vs. a federalist view) they also struggled with how to treat the indigenous population (i.e. Native Americans) and slaves.

"Slavery [and I would add how we treated America's indigenous population] will forever remain the signature sin of the founding."

The last chapter of AMERICAN DIALOGUE is a fascinating capsulization of what Ellis sees as three important moments in American history - Washington's commitment to war with England after the battles at Lexington and Concord; the treaty of Versailles, specifically how John Jay boldly decided to negotiate with France for the western border of the United States; and, perhaps most importantly, Philadelphia in 1787, when members of the Constitutional Convention had to decide whether to revise or replace the Articles of Confederation. [Spoiler alert, they replaced them.]

In summing up this rich and varied history of ideas and people, Ellis points to the opening words of the Preamble to the Constitution, "We the People..."

It is our very diversity, claims Ellis, and its inherent and evolving tension, that creates the need for continual dialogue. It is also our strength.

John M. Perkins, Soong-Chan Rah Speak at Civil Righteousness 2020 Conference

Jonathan Tremaine Thomas

After an introduction by Tami Flick (Executive Director of Jesus Loves Kalamazoo), Jonathan Tremaine Thomas opened up the Civil Righteousness One Blood 2020 Conference by referring to Chapter 5 of Revelation and noting that John wept because no one was found worthy to open the scroll.

"God is after a mature bride that's multi-ethnic, multi-generational," Thomas noted. "Birthed out of the fires of civil unrest."

Thomas defined Civil Righteousness as spiritual, cultural and economic renewal through moral excellence.

Dr. John M. Perkins (a long-standing social justice advocate) was then interviewed in the first general session after remarking that we're living in a time when we have collectively stopped believing the truth because we've become vain. But he was quick to note that God is at work through God's love. "We're at a Pentecost moment in the world. We're ready to listen to God and to each other."

Dr. Perkins answered a question put to him: If God wants oneness across cultures, why do we still have church congregations predominantly made up of one ethnic group?

"I don't think we realize how broken we are," he said. "But God loves us and hasn't given up on us."

He continued, "We're spitting in the face of the [U.S.] Constitution. We're all created equal with certain rights. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness... [But] we won't confess our sin. We make our sins bigger than grace because we're addicted to our sins. We have to come back to the root of the problem."

He was asked about what he would say to young people concerning the church. "...We need to get back to the basic truth for young people to build on. Faith is a mustard seed. You need to start small and practice your faith. Young people aren't seeing that [faith in action.]"

As evidence of the need to get back to basics, Dr. Perkins offered, "This is the first time in my 89 years that we view hate as a virtue."

"Progress comes in bits and pieces," he said, after a foundation of faith is established. "Justice comes out of God's deep love for us. Justice is a deep stewardship issue. We're raising up young people in churches who are Biblically illiterate."

Dr. John M. Perkins

When asked about how the church should approach unity, Dr. Perkins answered, "Be still and listen to God. That's called prayer." Go to God and ask, "and if God tells you what to do, you're more likely to do it."

"Begin by being obedient in the little things. We don't hear God because we're addicted to ourselves, so we don't hear Him... we've made God too small."

At the same time, Dr. Perkins challenged the audience to actively engage in works of social justice.  "We've got to listen to each other. You've got to be willing to enter into the pain of those who feel pain. Go to the people and love them. Don't wait for them to come to you."

In referring to the time when he first became a Christian after being arrested and severely beaten, Dr. Perkins said, "I decided that I was going to preach a Gospel that was going to save us all together," including those who had beaten him.

Dr. Perkins said the best way to respond to oppression was to "go to the people [oppressing you], live among them. Love them. Friendship is what discipleship is all about."

Jonathan Tremain Thomas then asked Dr. Perkins: "What is the unfinished work? Where do we go from here?"

Dr. Perkins answered "We've got to get love and justice straight and understand what love is... We need the passion to get pulled into other people's pain. We've got to figure out a way to come close. Eating a meal together is one of the best ways to evangelize. It's friendship."

You can watch Dr. Perkins' full panel interview here.

The conference's closing address was given by Dr. Soong-Chan Rah, an expert in urban justice and multi-cultural church development.

Dr. Rah focused on the importance of lamenting, mentioning that forty percent of the Psalms are of lament and suffering. He said that only five percent of the top 100 modern worship songs in America are songs of lament and suffering.

"We skip over lament to get to the celebration, but that short-changes our theology."

Dr. Soong-Chan Rah

He noted the historical significance of white flight during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s which was met with an unprecedented surge in construction of new church buildings in primarily white suburbs. "We created a church culture that ran away from the culture around us."

"The problem isn't [finding] the cure," he noted. "It's greed and materialism."

Dr. Rah gave the example of the AIDS epidemic. "We have the medicines to cure AIDS in Subsaharan Africa, so why haven't we sent it?"

He challenged the audience, saying that the counter-narratives to racism are laments (1), not conferences.

"Lament is a way to enter into a solution," he said, offering that widows, orphans, children, the lame and the blind are the authors of lamentations.

"Sometimes we don't need to hear from the experts. We need to hear from those who have struggled the most." He observed that real power doesn't come from the experts, but power comes from the stories of the oppressed, from their own lives.

"What are the stories that you aren't hearing?" he questioned.

"My challenge to you is... seek the voices that have been silenced."

You can watch Dr. Rah's keynote address here.

As a bonus, here's a video of the morning session on Biblical Justice led by Tami Flick and Jonathan Tremaine Thomas.

Many thanks to Jesus Loves Kalamazoo for putting all of the videos reference above up on their Twitter feed.
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(1) Dr. Rah explained that lament, in the Biblical context, consists of five steps: addressing the issue, offering the complaint up to God, trusting God to hear you, calling out to God, and then concluding by praising God.

Faith in the Face of Empire by Mitri Raheb: A Review

Mitri Raheb/Photo Credit: Calvin College

Mitri Raheb is a Palestinian Christian. Raised in a Christian home. Thoroughly credentialed as a pastor and thought leader. (I refer you to his website where you'll find a complete listing of all the awards he's won.)

What makes Dr. Raheb unique is his hermeneutical lens, which is his own history as a Palestinian. He uses this lens to examine the historical and cultural foundation upon which the current existence of Palestine rests in his book FAITH IN THE FACE OF EMPIRE: The Bible Through Palestinian Eyes.

He notes that Palestine has, for the most part, always existed as an occupied territory of one empire or another.

"Oppressed people are likely to stop imagining and stop developing bold ideas; they are caught up in the everyday struggle of providing the daily bread of survival. Reversing this dynamic is true resistance. True resistance is not killing a soldier or civilian or blowing up buildings. These are reactionary measures. Resistance is action, not reaction."

And where was Jesus in all this? For openers, it's helpful to remember that Jesus was a Palestinian Jew.

"In order to understand Jesus' way in terms of liberation we first have to ask what paths he did not choose."

Raheb goes on to observe that Jesus: never had a desire to go to Rome (the center of the then-occupying empire; had no desire to create a political party (he was extremely popular, but didn't align himself with a political party, he could have been king, but refused). The final thing Raheb notes is that "Jesus had no desire whatsoever to be a religious leader... He had the opportunity to become a leader of great renown, but he refused. He simply had a different political agenda to liberate the people of Palestine."

"Jesus believed that liberation started with empowering those who were marginalized," writes Raheb.

One of the key ingredients for liberation, writes Raheb, is spiritual. "In the Middle East there is too much religion and too little spirituality... What type of spirituality therefore, is needed in the face of the empire?"

For Raheb, peace in the Middle East will not come via military aggression. "It is a sad and terribly strange commentary to live in an age where waging war becomes logical and where questioning war is seen as demented. What is truly insane is to spend billions of dollars on arms and military equipment. Spending on military equipment comes at the cost of educating, empowering and employing people. Regions are not safer with all these weapons..."

As for efforts for the US and Israel to force peace terms, Raheb acknowledges that "peace dictated by the empire is not desirable, doable or durable." He goes on to say that "All life in general, and life in the Holy Land in particular, is a matter of living in the tension between the 'the world as it is' with all its ugly and painful realities and the 'world as it could be.'"

And, towards the end of his book, Raheb points to the power of faith in moving forward. But first, he puts forth quite a disclaimer: "Faith that makes people passive, depressive or delusional is not faith but opium."

Given this more inclusive idea of faith, Raheb remains amazingly hopeful. "Without faith, there is no imagination; without imagination, there is no innovation; and without innovation, there is no future. Faith embodies the view that we can imagine something that was not, until the present, part of our history."